Winning by not losing

Let me start by saying that Andy Murray is a great tennis player. He's a brilliant tactician and a hard worker. Everything he has earned up to this point has been a result of his great drive to improve, and now he is climbing to the very top of the game. But all of that won't keep me from falling asleep every time I sit down to watch one of his matches.

Now I realize it is a bit ridiculous and selfish of me to criticize a tennis player for not being entertaining. The only reason I feel strong enough to blog about it is because I feel it isn't the greatest thing for the sport overall. This is a man who is challenging for number one by playing passive, slow paced, consistent rally tennis. His main strategy is to make his opponent lose in a flurry of unforced errors. We've seen this before - Lleyton Hewitt played a very similar type of game when he was #1 several years ago. The difference was personality. Hewitt was a feisty competitor who really had to pour himself all over the court in order to fend off the big hitters of his day. By contrast Murray has a sort of sleepy type of game combined with a fairly negative attitude. These factors don't garner him tons of fans outside of the UK.

With Federer and Nadal slowly playing back into form I hope to see them contending for the bigger titles again. All due respect to Murray, but I just want to be excited to watch tennis on the weekend again!